OpenAI announced a new Apps SDK and native app integration for ChatGPT on 6 October 2025, enabling developers to build applications that run directly within the ChatGPT interface [source]. The company describes this as a shift from conversational plugins to persistent, interactive applications that can maintain state across sessions.

The Apps SDK allows developers to create custom interfaces using React components, with apps appearing in a dedicated Apps tab within ChatGPT. OpenAI states that apps can access ChatGPT's reasoning capabilities while providing their own UI elements, including forms, visualizations, and interactive controls.

This architectural change introduces new failure modes. Apps execute client-side code within the ChatGPT environment, creating potential for runtime errors, state corruption, or conflicts between app logic and ChatGPT's underlying model behavior. The SDK documentation indicates apps can make API calls and store user data, expanding the attack surface for data handling failures.

OpenAI has not published error rates, rollback procedures, or incident response protocols for app failures. The announcement does not specify how apps are sandboxed, what happens when an app crashes mid-session, or how users can distinguish between failures originating from the base model versus third-party app code.

The company is accepting developer applications for early access. No public registry of approved apps or failure telemetry has been announced. This marks OpenAI's second major attempt at extensibility after deprecating ChatGPT Plugins in April 2024, suggesting the previous architecture encountered limitations the company has not publicly detailed.